DISCUSSION
Digitalization: Opportunity and Challenge for the Business
and Information Systems Engineering Community
Christine Legner
•
Torsten Eymann
•
Thomas Hess
•
Christian Matt
•
Tilo Bo
¨
hmann
•
Paul Drews
•
Alexander Ma
¨
dche
•
Nils Urbach
•
Frederik Ahlemann
Published online: 4 July 2017
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2017
1 Introduction
The convergence of the so-called SMAC technologies –
social, mobile, analytics, and cloud computing – has led to
an unprecedented wave of digitalization that is currently
fueling innovation in business and society. As digitaliza-
tion is embracing all aspects of our private and professional
lives, it is becoming a priority for managers and policy-
makers, and has made it into the headlines of newspapers,
magazines, and practitioner conferences.
This wave of digitalization is creating opportunities for
the BISE community to engage in innovative research
activities and to increase the discipline’s visibility. How-
ever, since BISE researchers have investigated the
increasing exploitation and integration of digital tech-
nologies over several decades, they also naturally react
with ambivalence when others claim that going digital is a
new phenomenon.
1.1 Clarifying the Basics: Digitalization Versus
Digitization
Before entering the debate, it seems important to clarify the
terminological confusion around the phenomenon of digi-
talization. Although often used interchangeably with digi-
tization (as well as with digital transformation),
digitalization should be clearly distinguished from digiti-
zation. Digitization is the technical process of converting
analog signals into a digital form, and ultimately into
binary digits, and is the core idea brought forward by
computer scientists since the inception of the first com-
puters (Tilson et al. 2010; Hess 2016). Digitization dema-
terializes information and decouples information from
physical carriers and storage, transmission, and processing
equipment. While digitization puts emphasis on digital
technologies, the term digitalization has been coined to
describe the manifold sociotechnical phenomena and pro-
cesses of adopting and using these technologies in broader
individual, organizational, and societal contexts. With
advances in digital technology, we have seen several waves
of digitalization that have fundamentally transformed
business and society: The first wave focused on technolo-
gies replacing paper as physical carrier with computers,
leading to higher automation in work routines. The second
wave gave birth to the Internet as global communication
infrastructure, resulting in changes to the firm’s value
creation logic and new types of businesses, such as
Prof. Dr. C. Legner (&)
Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC), University of
Lausanne, Internef 127.3, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: Christine.legner@unil.ch
Prof. Dr. T. Eymann Prof. Dr. N. Urbach
University of Bayreuth, Universita
¨
tsstraße 30, 95447 Bayreuth,
Germany
e-mail: Torsten.Eymann@uni-bayreuth.de
Prof. Dr. T. Hess
LMU Mu
¨
nchen, Munich, Germany
Prof. Dr. C. Matt
University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. T. Bo
¨
hmann
University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. P. Drews
Leuphana University of Lu
¨
neburg, Lu
¨
neburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. A. Ma
¨
dche
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
Prof. Dr. F. Ahlemann
University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
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Bus Inf Syst Eng 59(4):301–308 (2017)
DOI 10.1007/s12599-017-0484-2
e-commerce or intermediaries. Today, we are experiencing
the third wave, where the converging SMAC technologies
and continuing miniaturization, combined with ever-in-
creasing processing power, storage capacity, and commu-
nication bandwidth, has made the vision of ubiquitous
computing become very close to reality. As a consequence,
digital technologies complement and/or enrich existing
products and services and allow building entirely new
business models. While digitalization has been the core of
the BISE discipline for decades, the current wave trans-
forms almost every aspect of our private and professional
environment. It ultimately leads to digital business, life and
society and is becoming highly relevant for a large number
of stakeholders and disciplines.
1.2 Digitalization as Opportunity and Challenge
In the face of a digital revolution, national and regional
governments are increasingly defining digitalization as a
strategic priority and are setting up large-scale initiatives to
foster digital transformation of science, industry, and
society. The German Federal Government’s Digital
Agenda (www.digitale-agenda.de) is a prominent example.
In doing so, they increase the public’s awareness and
introduce new research funding schemes and collaboration
models. Digitalization also creates further opportunities to
engage in research collaborations with industry. With the
omnipresence of digital technologies, companies feel
trapped in their traditional ways of working and approach
universities more often for innovation projects in research
and teaching. They expect students – as digital natives –
and researchers to provide an outside-in view into digital
opportunities in their industries and to help them to inno-
vate and develop digital business models, products and
services. Finally, technologies are becoming increasingly
user-friendly and accessible to researchers, and cloud ser-
vices provide low-cost access to very powerful IT infras-
tructures. Because entry barriers to implementing
innovative concepts via prototypes based on the latest
technologies are lowering, research ideas and results can be
more easily demonstrated. This allows one to make
research more tangible, to test and collect feedback on
research ideas, to evaluate research prototypes with larger
user communities, and to close the gap between research,
product development and commercialization.
Notwithstanding the increasing interest in digital tech-
nologies and their relevance for individuals, businesses,
and society, we observe ambivalence in the BISE com-
munity towards digitalization. As a discipline, we have
been studying the exploitation and uses of digital tech-
nologies for decades – from early mainframe computers to
client server systems and, more recently, the Internet and
Web 2.0. Digitalization can be considered as the common
denominator of our discipline, rather than a completely
new phenomenon. Even though the exploitation of digital
technology is at the core of our own discipline, many other
research communities are swiftly embracing digitalization,
often ignoring prior theories, concepts, or approaches from
our field. This also raises questions about cross-disciplinary
research collaboration and the roles of BISE contributions
in these aspects.
1.3 Reflections on BISE’s Role in Digitalization
In this discussion section, we seek to initiate reflection on
how the BISE community can leverage the opportunities
and can develop and/or maintain thought leadership on
digitalization. We summarize the contributions and sub-
sequent discussions of a panel at the Business and Infor-
mation Systems Engineering Multi-Conference 2016
(MKWI) in Ilmenau, Germany. This section is meant as a
first step in a sequence of discussion sections that sum-
marize debates from panels at subsequent BISE confer-
ences. These will address and further detail specific
aspects, such as the evolution of BISE as academic disci-
pline (information management vs. digital transformation),
the implications for future workplaces, and the role of
corporate IT departments and engagement with emerging
with other stakeholders.
In this first discussion section, BISE researchers convey
their perspectives on the current wave of digitalization.
They shed light on the following questions:
• What are the characteristics of the current wave of
digitalization? How does it differ from the previous
ones?
• What challenges and opportunities does digitalization
bring to the BISE community?
• What novel approaches and research designs do BISE
researchers engage into leverage the research opportu-
nities of increasing digitalization?
Prof. Dr. Christine Legner, HEC, University of Lausanne
Prof. Dr. Torsten Eymann, University of Bayreuth
2 Riding the Digital Transformation Wave
Digitalization has been a topic for information systems
research for decades. However, the current wave of digi-
talization is different: it is driven by us. As Brenner et al.
(2014) argue, the power in IT is shifting to users. As users,
consumers, and citizens, we expect sophisticated digital
services and products. These increasing expectations put
pressure on leaders in commercial and public organiza-
tions, and create significant opportunities for disruptive
startups. Digitalization is enabled by the convergence of
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the so-called IT megatrends (social, mobile, big data,
cloud, smart). However, the current wave also pushes tra-
ditional topics such as automation and integration forward.
Moving towards digitalized business requires organiza-
tions to undergo a massive socio-technical transformation
that affects organizational structures, strategies, IT archi-
tectures, methods, and business models. In our study on
digital excellence (Bo
¨
hmann et al. 2015), we identified 10
key areas that are subject to this substantive transformation
when companies seek to go digital:
• Digital leadership and digital empowerment Employ-
ees, management, and top management must update
their digital skills sets so as to be able to contribute to
digital innovation and transformation.
• Data-driven agility Digitally excellent companies con-
tinuously improve their digital services by implement-
ing a build-measure-learn approach. This requires new
modes of leadership and organization, improved ana-
lytics capabilities, and agile IT.
• Customer and partner engage ment Customers and
partners are the source of digitalization pressure. They
must be actively involved in many processes, since they
are a major source of value generation. Digital channels
must be optimized and combined appropriately with
offline channels.
• Digital platform management In many industries,
digital platforms are emerging that are rapidly trans-
forming existing value networks. Companies must
understand whether to transform into a platform
provider or to participate in platforms that are relevant
to their products and services.
• Business model innovation Enterprises are seeking to
leverage IT for business model innovation. For this,
they must establish creative autonomy for designing
and realizing novel business models.
• IT architecture transformation Making the existing IT
architecture ready for the challenges of a customer-
driven and user-driven IT remains a major challenge for
many companies (e.g. in the financial service sector).
• Process digitization and automation In many indus-
tries, companies are still seeking to increase the levels
of digitization and automation in their processes. This
is often a prerequisite for enabling digital services and
new business models.
• Digital security and compliance By raising the level
of digital interaction level in their ecosystem, enter-
prises are increasingly exposed to cyber-threats and
must take appropriate countermeasures to ensure
security.
BISE research has a strong tradition of analyzing and
designing sociotechnical systems. For mastering the cur-
rent digitalization wave, knowledge from BISE research
remains relevant. But, like businesses that were not born
into the customer-centric digital world, BISE research must
understand that digitalization also calls into question
established enterprise-centric thinking. A case in point is
the emergence of fast IT or digital IT units in companies
with new organization model that challenge our knowledge
on, among others, IT governance and business-IT align-
ment (Horlach et al. 2016).
Further, the current wave of digitalization reinforces the
need for transdisciplinary research. There are vast oppor-
tunities to engage with different communities. A user-
centric and data-driven focus provides avenues for coop-
erating with computer science researchers in software
engineering or human–computer interaction (e.g., Maalej
et al. 2016). On the business side, opportunities are arising
for closer collaboration with service research and market-
ing (e.g., Lush and Nambisan 2015). The BISE community
seems to be fairly well prepared for this challenge, since
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects
form part of its research history.
Should the BISE research community embrace digi-
talization? We argue that it should, based on ambition or
anxiety, or both. Ambition would seek substantial and
impactful contributions from BISE research that address
key challenges of digitalization. Ambition is good, but
the stakes are high. Unfortunately, the heart of many
developments in the current wave of digitalization don’t
beat on campus. The digital economy has created ample
opportunities for continuous experimentation with new
digital business models and services. The models,
methods, and tools required for designing and managing
digital business are often developed in these companies.
Keeping up with the pace of hundreds of thousands of
smart people in leading organizations and a vibrant
startup community will remain a challenge for BISE
researchers. For us, creating impact calls for engaged
scholarship beyond campus limits. Thus, for this ride, an
intensive exchange of ideas and cooperation with prac-
tice in inevitable. Yet IS researchers have another
motive to engage in digitalization: anxiety. If we wish to
provide relevant education to our current and future
students, we should work hard or face being left behind
with our legacy approaches of enterprise-centric IT. We
must understand how this emerging digital environment
works so that we can provide our students with useful
models, methods, and technical skills for customer-cen-
tric and service-centric information systems. For us, this
is all the more reason to engage with digitalization and
reflexive practitioners who are addressing these topics.
Prof. Paul Drews, Leuphana University of Lu
¨
neburg
Prof. Dr. Tilo Bo
¨
hmann, University of Hamburg
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3 From CIO to CEO: Digital Transformation
as an Opportunity for BISE
3.1 What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation describes the changes imposed by
information technologies (IT) as a means to (partly)
automatize tasks (Hess 2016). Digital transformation is
evident in numerous societal areas. For instance, we are
already seeing substantial IT-induced changes in political
decision-making, judicial frameworks, and related to sup-
ply and demand in labor markets. Further, our daily lives
and habits are increasingly supported by IT. In business,
digital transformation has particular importance, since it
requires and enables companies to transact in changing
markets.
Against this background, we distinguish three aspects to
digital transformation. First, the results of digital transfor-
mation (e.g., a novel CRM approach or a novel online
service from an insurance company). This relates to a
company’s target after digital transformation has been
carried out. Second, the de facto processes of the transfor-
mation, i.e. the necessary changes in a company. For such
implementation, suitable incentives or even new roles might
be needed. Third, the digital transformation’s underlying
technological background. In our example of the novel
CRM approach, this relates to the CRM system and the
online capabilities that are added to the insurer’s IT sys-
tems, as well as their integration into the company’s entire
IT landscape.
3.2 Why Should BISE Take Care of It?
Besides BISE, several other disciplines (such as marketing
or organization studies) could research digital transforma-
tion; some already do. We see three main arguments for
BISE to take the lead.
BISE’s close proximity to technological developments:
This is necessary to identify and filter the most promising
technological evolutions that can support and shape further
digital transformation. This closely relates to firms’
uncertainties over which technologies have the potential to
substantially impact their business, knowing that many of
them might never see successful diffusion in the market.
A realistic view of the technological requirements: Even
today, despite much technological progress, not everything
that is beneficial for a firm can be realized technologically.
Profound technological knowledge is needed even for a
first assessment of the likelihood of the successful real-
ization of new IT systems and their integration into existing
IT landscapes.
The ability to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the
topic: Since digital transformation affects companies in
their entirety, it is a matter of great technological, eco-
nomic, and social relevance. BISE’s existing knowledge in
these domains and its close proximity to these fields
enables comprehensive assessments, which are essential
for the organizational design of transformation processes
and the definition of a digitization strategy (Matt et al.
2015).
For the reasons given above, in our view, BISE has
substantial advantages over other disciplines in addressing
digital transformation and potentially making it a success
story for which the discipline can become well known.
3.3 What are the Opportunities for the Positioning
of BISE?
Traditionally, BISE has a strong focus on topics relating to
corporate IT departments, since this is where the devel-
opment of new corporate IT systems and their IT land-
scapes take place. At the same time, CIOs and their teams
are often – besides suppliers of IT products and services –
the most important contact for BI researchers in companies.
As a topic for BISE, digital transformation opens new
possibilities to engage with other important contact persons
in firms outside their IT departments. While this has reg-
ularly been claimed in the context of discussions on IT’s
strategic value in firms, it is seldom achieved. First evi-
dence from practice reveals that digital transformation
endeavors are often directly supported by CEOs, while
some firms employ dedicated Chief Digital Officers
(CDOs) (Horlacher 2016) to foster digital transformation.
These key C-level executives are useful contacts for BISE
researchers, and enable new opportunities for the entire
community, such as the establishment of new research
programs in cooperation with practice, and the enrichment
of new, existing study courses.
Take the media industry as an example, since it’s one of
the first industries to have been substantially impacted and
even threatened by digital transformation over the past
15 years – a process that is ongoing. More than five years
ago, several BISE chairs established the Internet Business
Cluster (IBC) (http://ibc-muenchen.com) in cooperation
with leading media industry partners in the Munich area.
Among others, the IBC addresses topics such as digital
business models in the media industry and the design and
implementation of digitization strategies. The IBC has
enjoyed substantial support from partner experts in cor-
porate development, product development, and operations.
To support these efforts, LMU Munich has established the
new Master’s program Media, Management and Digital
Technologies (www.mmt.bwl.uni-muenchen.de). This
program primarily targets students with a strong interest in
the digital transformation of media companies, as well as
the foundation and management of startup companies. Both
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approaches require profound business and management
expertise combined with solid technological depth.
3.4 What must Change in BISE?
Clearly, BISE has always dealt with the creation and
design of application systems as well as their integration
into the corporate IT landscape. Here, there has typically
been a strong focus on the systems, but less on business
aspects behind these systems. This is also true for our CRM
example: BISE has discussed, in depth, key aspects of
functional and technological design of CRM systems, as
well as their benefits for users. These are all important
aspects and undoubtedly essential for de facto adoption and
usage of a company’s system. However, digital transfor-
mation requires a focus on the business solution first (i.e.,
the novel CRM approach); based on this, the foundations
for the technological system background should be laid,
rather than vice versa.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hess, LMU Mu
¨
nchen
Prof. Dr. Christian Matt, University of Bern
4 BISE’s Role in Digital Transformation: Driving
Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation
The hype about digital transformation has put information
technology (IT) and information systems (IS) in a much
more visible position in business and society than in the
past. IT/IS has primarily been considered an enabler of
automation, contributing to efficiency increases. Beyond
this, the potential of IT/IS to increase effectiveness in
businesses by driving vertical data integration as well as
improving communication and collaboration by following
a people-centric integration approach has been recognized.
However, IT/IS is still considered as a basic support
function that does not touch or influence the core products
and services.
Recently, the potential of IT/IS to complement and/or
enrich existing products and services or to build entirely
new business models has been recognized. We have also
seen that IT/IS significantly influences the ways we live
and act in our private lives. The rapid growth of computing
power and storage capacity, in combination with advanced
software technologies, has enabled many technological
innovations, for instance the Internet (of Things) and big
data analytics.
Building on these technological innovations, IT/IS has
become part of almost every product or service. This has
impacted basically every industry sector, ranging from
autonomous cars in the automotive domain to robo-advi-
sors in financial services. Further, entire societies are
impacted, for instance IT-based social networks are con-
sidered an important enabler of the Arab Spring.
However, all these innovations are accompanied by
challenges: Extensive IT/IS usage can negatively impact
on individual users; issues such as technostress, addic-
tive behaviors, or privacy loss are seeing intensive dis-
cussion. Beyond individual-level impacts, digital
transformation is also changing the ways people interact
in the global village, and IT/IS misuse can also have
profound negative consequences. Finally, laws estab-
lished and defined for an analog world no longer fit the
digital world. These limitations are recognized by some
enterprises and are leveraged to implement unfair digital
business models.
The BISE community’s background and the roots make
it a potentially highly relevant contributor to address the
challenges and to leverage the potentials of digital busi-
nesses and society. The community has demonstrated its
interdisciplinary ability to speak the languages of different
disciplines and to translate between them. Further, under-
standing the foundations and impacts of IT/IS as well as
designing innovative IT/IS solutions were always consid-
ered as two – complementary – sides of the same coin. The
ability to work at the intersection of and to interlink the
social sciences, engineering sciences, and natural sciences
is becoming even more critical now. The members of the
BISE community have these competencies and should
actively contribute to designing digital transformation in
business and society.
The research alliance ForDigital (www.fordigital.org), a
regional research cluster between the Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology (KIT) and the University of Mannheim as well
as associated research institutes is an example of an initiative
driven by BISE community members. This network brings
together researchers from different disciplines such as
business, computer science, economics, law, philosophy,
psychology, and sociology from the two universities to work
together to better understand the phenomenon of digitaliza-
tion and to design new IT/IS solutions. Thus, we want new
theoretical contributions and technological innovations to
proactively interplay and inform one another.
The hype about digital transformation offers the BISE
community many opportunities. The following key activi-
ties and priorities are suggested:
• First, we should develop a leadership position by
setting up interdisciplinary programs in digital trans-
formation research. We should contribute to journals
beyond our core field and should contribute to our
disciplines with our key competencies.
• Second, from an education perspective, we need to
position our education offerings (basically, the WI
programs) as the ideal preparation for young people to
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